Using Our Minds Creatively

Our minds are always being creative. They might be stuck in loops, re-creating what they’ve already produced, or creating things that we don’t particularly like, but they are always being creative in some way. This article aims to show you how to use your mind to bring fresh things into the world.

Everyone Is Creative

Many people may have assumed that they simply aren’t creative. At school there were the creative children, and the not-so-creative children. The not-so-creative ones were probably better at consuming and regurgitating information rather than creating new ideas, and yet the constant remembering and absorbing of what we are told in school can leave little room to create new things within ourselves.

So how can you use your mind creatively, and for the better?

One word — stillness.

Inspiration Comes From Stillness

When someone is trying to be creative, things end up feeling very forced and without spark. Creativity is a mysterious thing, because it is not something that is easy to just switch on or off. It is not something we have complete personal control over. Creativity and its urges come through our minds and bodies, rather than coming from them. Creativity is an energy that surges with its own will, and the one thing it requires is space.

Stillness is another word for space. A gap in thinking. A connection to our source — the source of thoughts, the empty but vibrant field from which they emerge. We often learn to be so thought-focussed, that we lose sight of where it all comes from. We become like gardeners who are so focused on flowers and not at all on the soil — the more you ignore the soil, the less the plants are fed, the weaker the plants become, and soon they become less and less vibrant.

We have to focus on the soil primarily — the stillness beneath thoughts. We can’t access the stillness easily if we are stuck in a battle with our own minds, so we have to learn to no longer resist our own thought streams.

Resistance Masks Stillness

Repetitive thinking can indeed be annoying. Not being able to stop thinking the same thoughts over and over again is like shutting your sleeve in a train door as you exit, only to be dragged along until you find a way to escape.

What keeps us so easily trapped in old thoughts, unable to access stillness, is the resistance we have to our own minds. Each thought seems to come and propose it will lead you out of a thought-loop, that if you keep on thinking, eventually you will find a way out. It is a clever trick.

Take Noise Less Seriously

We have to no longer take our thoughts so seriously, to no longer take our own acquired knowledge to be the truth of the whole universe as it pretends to be. We have to give less credit to our own personal minds and resistances, and only then can our attention relax into the greater space that it all plays out in.

In this greater space, especially when our attention begins to merge with it again, thoughts are less constricting, things have more room. The source of all thoughts can begin to activate its own intelligence and create more pure, fresh, inspired thoughts. Thoughts or ideas or urges come, even solutions to problems - they arise without you feeling as if you are trying to create them or work them out. They arise in you like gifts.

Limited By Knowledge

Our only difficulty comes in thinking we already know it all. It’s like saying to the universe “I have everything covered already, I’m quite capable with my own personal mind and ideas based on my past experiences,” — and we close ourselves off from the whole, focusing in on one little human being’s acquired opinions.

If, however, we open up a little bit, if we admit that we don’t know everything, that we don’t have all the answers, and rather than trying to force a solution or a creation, get in touch with the power that creates and sustains the universe — then we have access to an intelligence far beyond personal human thinking. It becomes miraculous, you are guided from within about what to do, or you suddenly just do something that ends up having good results.

Relax Attention Away From The Head

Having all of our attention up in our head, in our own imagined selves, leads us away from the source of creativity. We have to begin getting in touch again with our entire body, feeling the entire body from within rather than just having all of our attention flood up behind our eyes. The whole body carries an intelligence of its own that is in direct contact with the rest of the universe. Our own personal minds feel separate and cut-off when they are all we focus on.

Realise The Universal Intelligence

The universe is obviously more intelligent than we are as separate little selves. We can go a whole lifetime not even knowing how our body works — and yet something keeps it working. Everything in nature seems to work perfectly, and we have to fall back into that intelligence, merge our identity back with the whole rather than with a collection of ideas, and we become a tool for the universe to use, rather than a tool that tries to use the universe.

Leave Gaps For New Things To Emerge Out Of

Gaps. Space. Stillness. A sense of not-knowing, but with an open receptiveness. A falling away of fear and a weakening of our attachment to results. All of these things begin to unclog our creative pipes and allow the force to flow again. Rather than fighting with ourselves and resisting what we don’t like in our lives, our minds and bodies become creators that manifest reality rather than feeling as if they are victims of it. Whatever results you might desire then come through you as realities that already exist on some level, rather than hopes that you are desperately dependent on…

More on this in Part 2, tomorrow.

If you have any questions or feedback, please let me know or comment below.